An opt-ed by Greg Gegeyter
Running for office normally is an endeavor that takes months if not years of planning and preparation. That’s not what happened in my case. I had always been politically engaged. I come from a small town, Bridge City, outside of Beaumont and was a precinct chair for a decade and worked my way through the ranks to briefly hold the county party vice chair position until Hurricane Ike flooded my home and office.
After then I still stayed engaged in the form of ideas, but didn’t step directly in the political battles wanting to simply blog and promote ideas. That all changed on April 6, 2020 when my son was at Texas Children’s Hospital and died. I’m on the phone with my wife since Covid restrictions won’t allow me to be at the hospital. While talking with her alarms sound and she wails, “He’s dead! Get to the hospital!” They were able to revive him, and he’s alive today only by God’s grace – the hospital kept insisting he would die to the point it caused my wife to miscarry. That was a defining time in my life and I decided that I had to become more engaged again to try and actively stem the tide of decay that is settling into society.
The past couple of years people had asked me to run for office. I always said no, the time isn’t right. A few days before the filing deadline I was driving to bring one of the children to the doctor and listening to Relevant Radio’s Father Simon Says. Father Simon is usually a mind mannered radio host, but he went into an impassioned tangent on how we lost society when we lost education, and how we have to take education back if we want to take society back. He ended his tangent with a call for people to run for school boards. I decided then and there to run.
The race for Houston ISD Board of Trustees Position VI is a three way race with three different visions. However, of the three candidates I’m the only one giving detailed proposals and how I can achieve the proposals. You can see the differences between the three of us by looking at the IVoterGuide candidate questionnaire ivoterguide.com/candidate?elecK=851&raceK=12922&primarypartyk=-&canK=59377&&path=/all-in-state/Texas
Details on what I accomplish can be found in a blog I wrote for Big Jolly Politics bigjolly.com/why-im-running-for-hisd-board-of-trustees-position-vi/ and on my web page degeyterforhisd.com. However, the best reason to vote for me is because I’m the candidate who is best suited to unseat the incumbent. She is on the special education committee and audit committee – two areas where HISD is failing. I’m better positioned to make improvement in these areas because of my background in disability law and having two disabled children.
No matter the election results, liberals will maintain control of the board. It will take finding areas of common ground and working from there to have an impact on the board. I’m better suited to generate goodwill with the existing board members by finding areas of common ground and working from there. For example, Trustee Sung has an environmental background, and before I went to law school I was a meteorologist and worked for the Environmental Protection Agency for a while. We have overlapping interests and can find common ground to initiate common sense policies to make schools more environmentally friendly without going to extreme environmental positions.
Finding areas of goodwill is important because the board is going in directions that are disturbing. They are focused on political messaging. Whether it’s renaming Yates field to George Floyd Field or making proclamations about pronouns the board’s focus is on politics. Conservatives need someone who can clearly and in an unobjectionable manner argue to the contrary so that public opinion begins to sway out way. George Floyd held a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly. That’s reprehensible, and an action that should prevent him from being honored. Conservatives need someone who is able to gently but firmly make that argument and others to promote our values. This can, and should, be done in a non-confrontational manner.
My vision and temperament has earned me the endorsement of Commissioner Tom Ramsey, Constable Ted Heap, Harris County Board of Education Trustee Eric Dick, the Harris County Republican Party; and the Texas Asian Republican Club has posted their belief that I am the candidate to support. I humbly ask you to go to the IVoterGuide questionnaire and to my web page and make an informed decision on who is the best candidate for the election. I also humbly ask for your support if you believe that candidate is me. We conservatives need a trustee to champion our causes with clarity of thought and integrity in action. I believe I am that man.
